About the Ranking Member

Oregonians know Ron as a senator who listens. Always citing the need to “throw open the doors of government,” he holds an open-to-all town hall meeting in each of Oregon’s 36 counties each year. Thus far he has held more than 1100 meetings. Wyden’s dedication to hearing all sides of an issue and looking for common sense solutions has won him trust on both sides of the aisle.

Wyden believes in crafting big, bold solutions that meet today’s unique challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led the charge in securing an additional $600 per week for unemployment insurance to help families hit hard by the pandemic and unprecedented unemployment crisis.

During that same time, Wyden secured passage of the historic expanded Child Tax Credit, which helped bring child poverty to its lowest level in decades by giving families walking an economic tightrope the help they needed to thrive and succeed.

In 2022, the Senate passed Democrats’ historic Inflation Reduction Act, which included the biggest investment in clean energy in our nation’s history, and comprehensive reforms to lower the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.

Wyden was the architect of the IRA’s clean energy tax credits, which were largely based on his Clean Energy for America Act. Wyden has always believed that securing a clean energy future and creating good-paying jobs that spur economic growth can and should go hand in hand, which was his guiding principle when crafting the legislation.

Wyden was also the architect of the IRA’s drug pricing provisions, which for the first time, gave Medicare the power to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and bring down costs for seniors at the pharmacy counter. He has won countless awards for his pioneering role in establishing a free and open Internet, is known for his commitment to an open government, having authored the “Stand By Your Ad” law and the resolution ending Senate Secret Holds, and he has been routinely recognized as one of the Senate’s foremost health policy thinkers. Ron is committed to lowering health care costs and providing better care for all Americans and protecting and preserving and strengthening vital health programs like CHIP, Medicaid, and Medicare.

As former chair of the Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Ron fought to ensure America’s ability to compete in a free and fair global marketplace. His work has exposed lapses in U.S. enforcement of trade laws and he has issued multiple reports illustrating how unfair trade practices are harming U.S. workers and industries. Wyden successfully led Senate efforts to back the United Steelworkers petition to get the Obama Administration to launch a trade case against China for its subsidies in the clean energy technology sector and was the first to call on Obama to establish a national strategy on exports.

Wyden began college at the University of California-Santa Barbara where he won a basketball scholarship and played in Division I competition for two seasons before transferring to Stanford University where he completed his Bachelors degree with distinction. He earned his law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1974, after which he taught gerontology and co-founded the Oregon chapter of the Grey Panthers, an advocacy group for the elderly. He also served as the director of Oregon Legal Services for the Elderly from 1977 to 1979 and was a member of the Oregon State Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators during that same period. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 1996.

Senator Wyden’s home is in Portland; he is married to Nancy Wyden, whom he wed in September 2005. He has five children: Adam, Lilly, Ava, William and Scarlett.